whole again

The last week I have been in a kind of funky mood. The tragic events in Newtown Conn. seemed to kick it off. I spent most of my life as some kind of first responder with the majority of my time spent as a Deputy Sheriff. My heart was broken when I heard and read the news reports last week. As a police officer and father I always felt my biggest responsibility was to protect the children. I cannot understand why or how anyone could harm a child, it breaks my heart. :-(

We did manage to make a major step forward. After a lot of research I decided on the type and model of motorcycle lift to install on the back of the motorhome for our Harley to ride on. I decided on a Mighty Hauler (http://www.mightyhauler.com/) hydraulic lift. They are manufactured in Barberton, Ohio so Tuesday morning we hooked the Dakota onto the back of the Winnebago and headed East.
This was our first experience towing the truck and to say I was a little nervous is an understatement! The trip was a little over 320 miles and took us 5 1/2 hours. The truck pulled great and after about 300 miles I calmed down some. :-)
We arrived just as they were closing for the day. We had already made arrangements to stay in their parking lot and they even ran a power cord out for us to use.

Wednesday morning we were up early since they open at 7am :-o! They had me back into one of their bays and explained everything they had to do to install the lift and told me it would take about 6 hours to complete. Good thing we had the Dakota to use because sitting there for 6 hours would have been really boring.
We explored the town a little, not a whole lot there, and ended up going to Grandpa's Cheese Barn in Ashland, Oh. which was about 30 miles away. I wanted to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and pulled the website up on my i-phone at breakfast. That is when I found the cost ...... $21 each! Seems a little high to me so we scraped that idea pretty quick.
We were just finishing lunch when I got a call on my cell phone that they were done. The install went smoothly and did not take them as long as they expected.
Here is a look at the finished product.

We had a quick lesson on it's operation prior to hooking the truck back on and heading out. We were a little rushed because there was some pretty bad weather coming our way Thursday with high winds and snow predicted. We had originally thought about driving about 1/2 way and stopping for the night and we could avoid driving after dark. The weather changed this plan though and we ended up arriving back in Jamestown shortly before 7pm. We pulled into one of the electric/water pull through sites used for overnighters since I didn't want to try and maneuver through the dark campgound trying to back into our full hook up site.
Thursday morning we woke up to rain and wind. The rain did stop (almost) long enough for us to get backed into our assigned site and I got all the utilities hooked back up. We were happy to be back safe and sound because the wind really kicked up with gusts in excess of 50 miles per hour! I'm sure glad we were not trying to drive in that!

We are getting geared up for Christmas celebrations with our family. Sunday we celebrate with Rudee's family in Plainfield and then we will spend Christmas day at our daughters house here in Jamestown. I'll keep you posted.